Quotes of the day 24th September 2016

"Corbynism is just a sloganising personality cult: an attitude, rather than a programme to reform the country. That attitude is banal in content, conspiracist in essence, utopian in aspiration and vicious in practice"

(Brilliant dismissal of the Corbyn project in two sentences by Nick Cohen, from a Spectator article called "This could be the end of the Labour party.")



I wrote last night that the Conservatives cannot rely on Corbyn's incompetence to keep us in power.

That is because NO party can take support for granted or assume because one set of opponents are utterly useless that they can get away with whatever they like.

For the same reason, Labour cannot assume that they are guaranteed to retain their current position as one of the two main players in British politics. There is a limit to the extent which an ultimately pragmatic people (as the British electorate usually is) will continue to elect even enough MPs to form Her Majesty's loyal opposition from a party which cannot credibly pretend to provide an alternative government because they are not serious about proposing workable solutions involving the kind of realistic compromises necessary to run a country.

It is extremely hard to knock one of the main parties in British politics out of the ring - it has only happened once in the last century, and even Mrs Thatcher's  shattering defeats of Labour or Blair's even more shattering defeats of the Conservatives failed to do it.

But it is not impossible to a party to be knocked out of contention for power. I think it would have happened to the Conservatives in 2005 had they not sacked IDS - and I think it might happen to Labour if they stick with the Corbyn project for much longer.

I will watch today's announcement of the results of the Labour leadership election with interest - but also with concern for the country.

As Disraeli said






















And, frankly, I don't see either of the candidates for Labour leader providing a formidable opposition.

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